When people doubt their ability to read tarot, they usually focus on the moments that felt unclear.

The spreads that didn’t make sense.
The cards that seemed contradictory.
The readings that felt flat or frustrating.

Very rarely do they pause to remember the opposite.

But if you’ve been working with tarot for any length of time, there is almost certainly at least one moment — sometimes quiet, sometimes startling — that has stayed with you.

A card you pulled that you couldn’t forget.
An image that felt unaccountably accurate.
A message that only made sense weeks or months later.

That moment matters more than you think, because confidence in tarot doesn’t grow from getting everything right — it grows from recognising when something real has happened.

For many spiritual explorers, tarot enters our life at a time of questioning:

Who am I, really?
Why am I here?
Which direction feels aligned with the life I’m meant to live?

Tarot doesn’t answer these questions in a single dramatic revelation, however much I wish it would. More often, it offers glimpses. Symbols. Mirrors.

And sometimes, one of those mirrors reflects you with startling clarity.

Perhaps it was The Hermit, appearing when you were already withdrawing inward, long before you consciously admitted you needed solitude to think and dream.

Perhaps it was The Tower, just before the changes you’d put off making were made for you.

Perhaps it was something subtler — a card that named a pattern you’d been circling for years.

Whatever it was, that moment lingered in your memory.

That lingering is significant.

Tarot works through recognition. Your unconscious mind responds to symbols before logic has time to interfere. When a card feels meaningful, it’s rarely because it predicted an external event with precision. It’s because something inside you recognised itself.

And yet, when doubt creeps in, we tend to discount those moments.

We tell ourselves it was coincidence.
Projection.
Selective memory.

But what if, instead of questioning whether you can read tarot properly, you asked a different question:

Where has tarot already connected with me?

If you’re willing, take a few quiet minutes to reflect in your journal:

• What is one card or reading that has stayed with you over time?
• At the time, how did it make you feel — reassured, unsettled, seen, challenged?
• Looking back now, what do you understand about that moment that you didn’t fully grasp then?

You might also ask:

• “What part of myself did I recognise in that card?”
• “Did I trust what I saw — or did I argue with it?”

This kind of reflection does something subtle but powerful. It shifts your attention away you’re your performance as a reader and towards your relationship with the cards.

Tarot isn’t a machine designed to produce instant predictions. It is a symbolic language that reveals patterns, invitations and turning points — often gradually as the relationship between you builds in trust and confidence.

When you remember a moment where tarot felt meaningful and accurate, you are not proving that you are psychic. You are acknowledging that you were present enough to recognise something true that was shown to you — and that recognition is the foundation of your confidence as a reader.

Before searching for a new spread, a new deck or a new technique, it can be deeply grounding to simply ask:

“What has tarot already shown me about who I am?”

The answer may be quieter than you expect, but it will almost certainly already be there.